Authors

John Gould¹; Jaxon Hoskinson¹;  ¹ Colorado College, United States

Discussion

This paper examines the democracy-building strategy of “centering” and “unity” in competitive authoritarian electoral settings with a particular focus on its failed deployment in the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election. Since the mid-1990s, the conventional wisdom of pro-democracy activists and Western-based liberal political NGO’s has been to encourage divided oppositions to unify into often, ideologically incoherent coalitions and limit their messaging to broadly unifying, centrist themes. These actions are necessary, the conventional wisdom asserts, if the opposition is to overcome the electoral advantages of a quasi-authoritarian incumbent. This paper will explore the origins of this strategy in the democracy-promotion policies of Western Embassies and NGO in the 1990s, analyze its intersectional implications on queer activists, and reevaluate the strategy given the failure of the United Democratic Opposition in the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election..